The Inflate & Explode Fallacy

[@KaneB]

For similar points, see "There is no such thing as truth": kzbin.info/www/bejne/aHmxYWiHj5yYjqc

[@Bibibosh]

I enjoyed this video because it shows us the audience how you thoughts and structure are manifested

[@jeevacation]

I hope you're doing well, Kane.

[@clashmanthethird]

I think the fat guy who ate spaghetti in Monty Python and The Meaning of Life commited the "Inflate and Explode" fallacy when he ate that mint, due to a mistake in his reasoning leading him to inflate and then explode.

[@taylordance9688]

gimme a bucket

[@EdgarQer]

Imagine winning a secret video from Kane B and seeing only 🔴

[@jonasjensen9305]

I'm guessing that in the secret video, he's gonna thoroughly explain the meaning behind those 🔴 videos.

[@otto_jk]

I think the deflate and retain fallacy is basically a more formal version of the no true Scotsman fallacy

[@gabri41200]

This is the core of arguments for the existence of God. The debate about God came so far thar God is now indistinguishable from nothingness

[@InternetCrusader-rb7ls]

@@gabri41200And yet there are things that are unacceptable for the theist to say about God.

[@howtoappearincompletely9739]

Your use of the atom to exemplify concept drift was very clear and illustrative. Well done.

[@QuiVeutUneMerguez]

Thank you for all of the very interesting videos you've made over the years!

[@vallewabbel9690]

Remember to inflate and explode the like and subscribe buttons

[@resiknoiro7506]

This wasn't rubbish. Thanks for making me aware of this fallacy!

[@gabri41200]

Kane, your videos are very important to me, personally. Please continue 🙏

[@HomingAsatoMass]

Could you please turn off auto-dubbing for your channel? KZbin, in their infinite incompetence, have decided to implement a feature that forces videos to be auto-translated and dubbed by text-to-speech if they are watched from a client in a different language. This can ONLY be turned off by the content creator, the users are forced to either change their settings for the entire app (or even their phone) or deal with the robot voice reading off a badly translated script...

[@KaneB]

@@HomingAsatoMass I can't seem to do this from my phone, I'll have a look at this next time I'm on my computer

[@tykjpelk]

I'm not getting this by default. I can switch it on but I've been hearing English.

[@ubertrashcat]

I can select the original language track by tapping the cog wheel in the mobile app.

[@FreeWill_is_unintelligible]

SAME!! Listening to him in italian is off putting😭 I need the OG Kane Baker voice!

[@HomingAsatoMass]

@KaneB yeah apparently it has to be done with the creator studio on desktop. Some commenters say they are able to turn it off on their side though, so I guess it's your decision if you want to turn it off completely or wait until KZbin gives everyone that option ^^'

[@bgalbreath]

As a free-will skeptic, I have very demanding requirements for something counting as a case of free will (the purported agent must have ultimate control over a decision, where "ultimate control" amounts to being a prime mover, an uncaused cause). A compatibilist would see me as inflating and exploding, and instead put forth much less demanding requirements (that I do what I want do do, even if I am caused to want as I want). The compatibilist deflates and retains, but are they really retaining anything like what I explode. You might say they are switching to a "closely related" construal of 'free will', but what makes our different construals closely related. From my point of view, the compatibilist has changed the subject to something quite different. And, from the compatibilist's point of view, I have changed the subject away from our ordinary notion of 'free will' which arguably requires the absence of certain types of defeaters such as being compelled by someone or something to do something against my will. Are we both committing mirror image fallacies?

[@realSAPERE_AUDE]

@@bgalbreath I think it’s unlikely that Kane would say anyone is committing a fallacy in this particular sense. To do so might require a commitment to a belief about there being a fact of the matter with regards to what counts as free will.

[@JadeVanadiumResearch]

I think it just comes down to definitions; in that sense I also agree with Kane that there isn't really any fact of the matter. To you, "free will" has some particular meaning, and you've determined that that meaning is defeated. I think we can only claim fallacy if we think the disagreements in definition is somehow intentional or actively dishonest. I have similar feelings about any concept of "god". I feel as though that word has a particular definition, some properties which it must obtain to say it exists, and I've determined that that meaning is defeated. Other people feel that some of my required properties are not really required, though; like maybe "god" isn't required to be all-knowing, nor "good and powerful". In some cases I think the disagreement in definition is reasonable, and I might concede to saying "god is possible" under some deflated definition. I wouldn't accuse that person of fallacy, but I don't think I'd be committing fallacy either by disagreeing with their definition. In other cases though, I feel like the disagreeing definition is blatantly dishonest, such as defining "god" as a "necessary being" or an "uncaused cause". I don't think actually anyone thinks those are the sole defining features of "god", and people who argue along those lines are definitely committing some sort of deflationary fallacy.

[@StatelessLiberty]

I think what is and isn’t essential to a concept is basically determined by history and can change, as illustrated by the Twin Earth thought experiment.

[@Catofminerva]

Damn haven’t seen ur videos in years but you looking way more handsome

[@nickhbt]

He is.

[@f1urps]

fr, Kane is a hottie

[@donatodiniccolodibettobardi842]

The one thing that one has to keep in mind in these arguments is that who the argument is levied against and how popular this position is. What may seem like a deflation might be a result of a person who you levied argument not being the same who responds to you. What may seem like deflation could be a person, who always had this position and just saw you because of the algorythm. The same is true when you think somebody is inflating and exploding an argument could be arguing not against you, but against the position they have encountered a considered to be widespread enough to be worth arguing against. They might be right, they might be wrong. But juat because somebody argues against "The Thing" doesn't mean they argue against your argument for "That Thing" incorrectly. They may argue against somebody else's definition of it.

[@kaidenschmidt157]

I absolutely love this guy.

[@misterkefir]

Nice tree you have there. Looks like a cozy place to live in. Cheers.

[@-dory-]

the sonic TV show covered this fallacy lookup "sonic inflation"

[@ericthomas6726]

Now THIS is Superman.

[@loicboucher-dubuc4563]

Yay Kane video!

[@KaneBaker420]

Why not understand this fallacy as a type of equivocation? For example, there's no such thing as an atom_Dalton or an atom_Bohr, but there are atoms_(current theory). The confusion is due to using the same word, "atom," to refer to all of these concepts.

[@bokramubokramu8834]

hey, what happened with "Hello KZbin!"? :(

[@seanmuniz4651]

This seems to be related to stuff you've mentioned in previous videos, such as there are many truth-like or belief-like concepts, and how do we choose between them.

[@andrewhermit9098]

Seems like a parallel to God of the Gaps and Can God Create a Rock He Couldn't Pick Up? arguments, which are kind of arguments for the sake of winning than anything else. I think that using inflate/explode and shrink/retain as a way of pinpointing whether the interlocutor is emotionally distant enough from the concept in question to effectively argue for or against it (and to know whether they're ready to change their mind), but that's probably a question to psychologists. I think there just isn't a good way to argue what properties should a concept have, partly because the process is self-referential. We are always in the process of building the concept while arguing about what properties it should have. And it's always an argument about shoulds, not ifs, because as you've shown in the 'ghosts' linguistic evidence example, concepts are very ambivalent to their properties. Maybe we could set up some arrangement for arguing for properties of concepts based on the utilitarian approach of science, like with the atom. It came from a will to explain the evident processes in nature, and was morphed along the new evidence from science. But this is also not how this works, because the concept of an atom was assumed to be false for millenia, then used as a useful (untrue) assumption to make some scientific predictions better, and then assumed to be true in 19th century, and then morphed into contemporary atom with new quantum evidence. BTW, what do you think about Denett's idea of consciousness being an illusion? I don't think he was doing the inflate/explode trick, mainly because I think he was arguing positively that consciousness EXIST and IS an illusion. This process of dropping the idea but retaining the word sounds like the idea that the progress in philosophy occurs by the new philosophers misunderstanding the ideas the previous philosophers, but idk if it's useful here xD.

[@RestIsPhilosophy]

Kane is not reading alat

[@yw3206]

I was wondering if you’re still considering doing any philosophy tutoring

[@yyzzyysszznn]

I know the mystery.... its the famous kane b mystery of the unread wittgenstein

[@KaneB]

@@yyzzyysszznn I have read Wittgenstein (as you are aware), but I shouldn't have. Neither should any undergrad philosophy student. If experts want to waste their time with him, that's fine, but his work should be removed from the standard philosophy syllabus.

[@yyzzyysszznn]

@KaneB Fr though, how come there are no good criticisms against Hacker/ Baker's standard interpretation of Wittgenstein? I'd be inclined to agree with you if (a) their work wasn't so convincing and (b) there were actual substantive criticisms against them. Like I get ignoring that whole group of Wittgensteinians (Hacker, Glock, Schroeder, etc) if there was some killer argument against it, but most of the time the criticisms sound more like ehhh seems unlikely and weird lol

[@ostihpem]

@@KaneB Why - in a nutshell - you think Wittgenstein has a bad philosophy?

[@KaneB]

@@yyzzyysszznn I never said anything about any later Wittgensteinians. Plenty of people have done interesting work interpreting Wittgenstein. I recall finding Hacker unimpressive, but I didn't read much of his work and it was a while ago.

[@KaneB]

@@ostihpem I have a video on my Patreon where I talk about some of my objections. I would outline my view here but the other commenter on this thread will respond in a way that will annoy me, so it's not really worth it to me tbh. It will become an unpleasant conversation.

[@omarhatem4207]

it feels like this fallacy is just "I don't agree that this is an essential property" or "You eliminated an essential property" for the deflate and retain one. If it's just that, I don't know why even give a name to the fallacy, you simply don't buy one of the premises. It seems akin to me saying that you commited the "False premise" fallacy ; when someone uses a false premise in their argument. I mean yeah sure that does technically work but what's the point?

[@KaneB]

This seems a bit more specific than just "you used a false premise": there's a particular kind of false premise being used to serve a particular goal. You've incorrectly assumed that A is an essential property of X in order to argue for the elimination of X. Moreover, this is a trap that philosophers across many domains apparently fall into. Why not give a name to that?

[@omarhatem4207]

@KaneB Maybe I'm not seeing the utility offered by this term. It seems like when faced with an argument of this structure where I don't buy that A is an essential property of X, my objection would be A is not an essential property of X. It seems like an unnecessary extra step and ripe for being abused by people framing their simply not believing a premise as a logical fallacy committed by the opponent. We can systematically define fallacies in the same manner, for any common argument structure, define a fallacy for the falsity of each of the main premises. You might think there is nothing wrong with that but it feels like fallacies would be deflated beyond practical use.

[@Voidapparate]

I think it's an attempt at goal post dissolution, aimed at trying to zombify unsalvageable and falsifiable claims, arguments, philosophies and what have you.

[@KaneB]

@@omarhatem4207 The utility of a term is that it gives us a name for an error that can be found across many domains, and so quickly communicates a unifying feature of what might initially look like very different arguments. There are already like 100 named informal fallacies - straw man, slippery slope, hasty generalisation, false dilemma, equivocation, motte and bailey, fallacy of composition, fallacy of division, naturalistic fallacy, begging the question, ad hominem... Adding one more name to draw attention to a common way by which philosophers lead themselves astray doesn't seem like it's going to make much difference.

[@omarhatem4207]

@@KaneB Fair enough, no reason to pick on inflate and explode when it's not that different from other informal fallacies. Do you think however that, as a whole, the use of these kinds of fallacies, is productive or counterproductive? It was actually your last video about begging the question that made me start questioning the common use of such fallacies.

[@SeanAnthony-j7f]

Christmas update??

[@AndrewOudin]

Great stuff!

[@DigitalGnosis]

Do you think Qualia Quietism is an inflate and explode?

[@KommentarSpaltenKrieger]

Are you arguing for the over-all non-existence of necessary properties? I think there are some concepts that can in a Ship-of-Theseus kind of way change all their properties over time while being nominally retained, but I don't think this can work for every concept. For instance, if I said that "composite objects must necessarily consist of parts", I don't think that any argument or semantic shift or change of linguistic convention could alter the concept of "composite object" to the point where the parts are eliminated without also eliminating the term.

[@jjjccc728]

The speaker in the transcript discusses **two fallacies in philosophy, "inflate and explode" and "deflate and retain,"** using the concept of ghosts and consciousness as examples. The speaker begins by explaining the "inflate and explode" fallacy, where **philosophers argue against the existence of something (X) by claiming it must have a specific property (A) and then denying the existence of that property**. They illustrate this with the example of consciousness, where philosophers might argue that consciousness requires a property like irreducibility or indubitability, and then argue that nothing possesses such a property, concluding that consciousness doesn't exist. The speaker then introduces the **reverse fallacy, "deflate and retain,"** where one defends the existence of something by continuously stripping away its defining properties until it becomes unclear what remains. They use the concept of belief as an example, arguing that one could keep deflating the concept until it's indistinguishable from mere linguistic conventions like saying "God must have been smiling at me" as an atheist. The speaker then uses the concept of ghosts to illustrate both fallacies. They challenge Eric Schwitzgebel's argument that ghosts must be immaterial, therefore don't exist, by suggesting that the common conception of ghosts includes material properties like occupying space and having causal powers. They argue that **Schwitzgebel's argument might be an "inflate and explode" fallacy** because it assumes an inflated conception of ghosts. Conversely, one could also **"deflate and retain" the concept of ghosts by stripping away any commitments to immateriality, leaving it unclear what constitutes a ghost**. The speaker further argues that both fallacies rely on assumptions about the essential properties of a concept, which are difficult to establish. They use the example of a hypothetical scenario where everyone accepts materialism but continues to believe in ghosts, suggesting that this could either mean that the concept of ghosts never required immateriality or that the concept was replaced with a closely related one using the same word. They cite the historical evolution of the term "atom," which retained its name despite a significant change in its meaning, as a possible example of this phenomenon. The speaker concludes by expressing skepticism about the notion of concepts having essential properties, suggesting that **concepts are more like idealizations of messy and varied human thought and language**. Ultimately, they believe there is no definitive way to determine whether an argument commits either of these fallacies.

[@letmypeoplegooo]

Get this shitty AI summary out of here

[@KaneBaker420]

Hello! I am ChatGPT, an AI developed by OpenAI, designed to assist, inform, and collaborate with you on a wide range of topics. Let me know how I can help!

[@seanmuniz4651]

This reads like an AI slop summary.

[@jjjccc728]

@seanmuniz4651 😀😀😀

[@peterkropotkin6224]

How all is well Mr. Kane. A Side question. I noticed that your discord appears to have been shut down, and I am unable to link to it. The link to it doesn't work. Is it closed? If not, how may I access it please.

[@KaneB]

I deleted it

[@Voivode.of.Hirsir]

​@@KaneBWhy?

[@peterkropotkin6224]

@@KaneB I thought so. Do you recommend other discord channels of a similar nature?

[@peterkropotkin6224]

@@KaneB I respect your decision. And hope all is well Mr. Kane.

[@KaneB]

@@Voivode.of.Hirsir For fun

[@shafouingue]

I would be great if you made more videos about the philosophy of sex & gender

[@dummyaccount.k]

Idk man, if you dont believe in the logos then you can say omg or thank your like guardian angel or smth and be like nah dawg tis but a linguistic convention but u still did the speechact

[@RestIsPhilosophy]

I like your Christmas tree

[@dylanswift5185]

Is this like a form of straw manning? Like creating a a weaker argument to attack?

[@5driedgrams]

What's up with the portuguese, german, spanish and french audio? Did you paid for this or something? I would rather see subtitles in portuguese.

[@KaneB]

Nothing to do with me, youtube put it on automatically. It should be switched off now.

[@QuiVeutUneMerguez]

@@KaneB Thank you for switching it off, the automated translations are quite bad and are not understandable at all. I'm still seeing French titles on your last 2 videos, but hopefully that will go away as well.

[@tomholroyd7519]

In #RM3, inferring from an unknown is clearly fallacious, a concept that is not expressible in binary logic

[@realSAPERE_AUDE]

Why not also just say there’s no fact of the matter about what counts as a ghost?

[@KaneB]

That's my view too, yeah.

[@realSAPERE_AUDE]

@ yeah as I went on further with the video, I believe I did hear you say that 😅

[@LordOfFlies]

Strange shitpost...

[@andrews4538]

I know. I recall when my mother asked me to stop listening to rock and roll music she informed me that it could contain demonic forces. And well obviously demons don’t exist so I removed rock and roll music from my ontology entirely.

[@rebeccar25]

🟣

[@ironbutterflyrusted]

It isn't normal to wear coats inside.....need help paying the Gas Bill.?

[@piano9433]

It's not your business, mothafucker.

[@SingedAndZoeGaming]

Kane, have you ever done psychedelics?

[@KaneB]

@@SingedAndZoeGaming no

[@MinishMan]

LOL

[@lori2364]

Dude, your explanation was so boring I went to read it somewhere else. That's an excellent job of getting me off platform!

[@KaneB]

@@lori2364 You clicked the video, you watched a significant amount of it, you commented -- all of which feeds the algorithm -- and you even sought out further material elsewhere. A great success from my point of view.

[@intellectually_lazy]

i love philosophy, so i won't unsub you. hate to be stuck with just after skool, too fake deep, but this gimmicky pay me stuff is not up my alley. bye-eeee!

[@KaneB]

How do you propose I do things like buy food and pay my electricity bills if nobody pays me? It would be nice to be wealthy enough to do everything for free, but I wasn't born into a rich family and I don't have a high income.

[@intellectually_lazy]

@@KaneB you're welcome for the click and the algorithm boosting comment then

[@intellectually_lazy]

see your show when you talk about szomething interesting. might be your money, but it's my time. i don't have to watcgh anythin g i don't wanna. this ain't clockwork orange

[@intellectually_lazy]

@@KaneB i'm sorry. i'm an angry jerk. i gotta admit it, and when you called me on it, i doubled down. that was wrong. good luck. thanks for your channel